I’ve been cleaning out my paper drawers. It’s been a weeklong process of pulling out papers and looking at them with fresh eyes. How can I turn these into something else?

When I first started making paper in earnest over ten years ago, I cut up a beautiful pink linen skirt and grey cotton pants. I used these coloured pulps to create images of a flame on white cotton/linen paper as part of my university project.

I had to make at least 12 sheets of perfectly formed paper as an edition. It was such a big achievement I held onto this pile of papers, waiting for just the right project to use them in. That moment never came. Time to move them out of my paper drawers and onto my studio bench.

I started folding and stitching them into little notebooks. Each one a bit different, with red string ties on them as closures. On the end of each tie was a bead or a button and I collaged new paper circles onto them to hold the threads in place.

Encouraged by this success I pulled open the next paper draw which was filled with offcuts of screenprints. I found creamy white print and drawing papers to stitch inside the screenprinted notebooks. I then glued slices of the screenprint and little dots onto the front of the notebooks, playfully collaging onto the collages. It was fun!

I realise I had undervalued the very liberating feeling I got when I made my first collages twenty years ago. Paper collage has been my default practice for so many years yet I had suddenly abandoned it last year as if I had ‘grown out’ of it.

Recognising that joy of creating for fun lead me to a bigger breakthrough. I had another small project in mind and wanted to use up some digital prints of collages I had made last year in the UK. I had already exhibited them as part of my Masters course and had several prints in different sizes which I had rolled up to take home with me.

I brought these out of the next paper drawer and began tearing them up and reconfiguring them. Collaging collages!

I still have the original digital prints as a template which in turn were a copy of the original collages too bulky to pack in my already bulging suitcase. These copies of the originals suggest a new approach to working. By creating digital prints of collages then tearing them up to re-collage them into new work means I will never run short of ideas again.

I have ten years worth of collages sitting in boxes in my studio I can start experimenting with. My collage practice has reignited a new spirit of experimentation. I can’t wait to see what I can create from the next drawer down. It’s filled with old etchings. What if I create copies of these and collage them with copies of old collages then copy them?

A computation of collaged collages…..